M.R. Adams's Blog, page 2

Origins of Hell (Excerpt)

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Claudius Merloche was enlightened. He had killed himself with a pistol in the mouth, collapsing onto the grave of his wife, their two small children buried at their side. He was dead before the black birds took flight from the trees.
When he awoke, his wife slept in bed, her blond hair fanned about her, a messy sleeping beauty. He smiled, then raised the ax and butchered her head. He stopped after her neck was a stump, a pulp of flesh, bone, feathers, and hair hovering above–twenty-two whacks. He had imagined his vision of that painting, where the man had air for a head, his hat seemingly floating. He took clumps of her hair and dabbed them about the pillow.
Next, he visited with his daughter. Sitting in the rocking chair, he placed his ax in his lap and watched the angel for fifteen minutes. For sleeping so quietly, she was rewarded with two whacks; his son, fifteen. Boys were supposed to be men–stronger, protectors. He fixed himself a glass of warm milk, turned on the late show, and fell asleep smiling. Next time, he’d use chloroform and place them together. The children could lie across their mother in opposite directions. When Claudius awoke, his wife slept in bed, a messy sleeping beauty. He raised the ax.
The first hundred repetitions, he cried inside. He fought to control himself and the cold hunger that needed their blood. But he knew their death was peace, the only way to sleep. Otherwise, he’d be awake for eternity. The hundredth and fourteenth time, he had accepted his futile attempt to control destiny as an act. He needed to feel like a good person.
Hacking their heads, he got his sleep. He woke up, repeated, always thinking how he could evolve artistically, his own cross. The surrender, the release of the horror, anger, and self-consciousness, opened a space in his mind: He hadn’t killed his soulmates. Why was this his hell?
The two hundredth and fiftieth time, he stood over his wife and raised the ax. This wasn’t her. He hacked away. He visited his children. This wasn’t them. He hacked away. The two hundredth and ninety-seventh time, he understood. Drinking his warm milk, drifting to wherever the dead dream, he had his next true thought: He blamed himself for their deaths. If he hadn’t worked late, he would’ve been home to protect them from the random psychopath that snuck into their house and slaughtered his family into art. Having felt the numbness, desperation, and impotence it took to find a flickering moment of harmony in such gore, he knew he couldn’t take responsibility for this deed. Seeing these people as holograms of guilt freed him enough to fulfill his task, freeing him to experience a new thought, one his own, releasing him to do what he had originally deemed hopeless: he took control. There were still twinges of regret as he saw his loved ones so serene in their slumber, but he did what he had to. A second chance at life, the afterlife, awaited him.
The three hundredth and fiftieth time, he thought about the monster. How sad to find peace in misery, misery in peace, to live tortured by urges twisted. How could God do this to someone? Simple. There was no God. This man was not guided by demon nor angel, just a nature that refused to reward its host for doing anything noble. How hard had this man fought before giving in to the compulsion to kill, for how long did he deny–try to deny–that he only had one resort to calm the agitated waves, the flickering, rotten peace that was not true peace? Karma was a wheel that spun faster and faster the harder you tried to stop.
And there was enlightenment. No Heaven, no Hell–only karma, the energetic thrust of our accumulated and omnicycling thoughts, feelings, and deeds that sent our souls hurling through the vortex of existence. Conservation of energy declared souls never died; they only transitioned into another state. As pure spirit regaled at another frequency, another realm, everything was of his own manifestation, his reality an instant mirror of his soul. He went to sleep the four hundredth and ninety-ninth time and awoke in a circular room with nine doors.
The space smelled musty; the air, damp and heavy. The wooden floors were scuffed with white marks, faded and cracked. The walls, the doors, the dome above were generic white. As an act of good will to the next karmic traveler, Claudius willed the floors a polished mahogany; the walls, a soft seafoam; the doors, a sunny yellow; and at the center he placed a table with a vase of tulips, his baby girl’s favorite flower. His son’s favorite number was three, three gifts for their supposed savior. And yet, why did everything feel so damned? Claudius counted three doors around and went through.

Creation in a Vast Expanse

Fabulous Libraries

Click Here for an interactive panorama of this library. Drag the image with your mouse to explore. It’s a big file and may take awhile to load.

Here are more amazing libraries and thanks to Meryl for the tip.

- reblogged from The Passive Voice

Craft of Fiction: The Storyteller & The Writer (As Phase and Stereotype)

Before discussing the elements of fiction, let's discuss the phases of writing. In mainstream literary culture, we often distinguish between "Storytellers" and "Writers." Storytellers are those who generate plot-narratives that are gripping and well paced, often at the expense of good prose and complex characterization. Writers focus on pretty prose and longwinded meditations on themes. Storytellers work with high concepts (VAMPIRE!, ALIENS!, SPIES! ALL IN A DYSTOPIAN WORLD!); Writers, the mundane (cooking, staring into a lake).

These are the stereotypes I've often seen employed when trying to divorce the idea that some people tell stories; others, write. It's a stereotype so we know it's not true, because there are no blanket judgments. But some people do fit the trend, enough to cause a debate in literary culture.

The phenomenon has its points. Stephanie Meyer has often been hailed as a storyteller but not a writer by her own fanbase. Readers love her world, her characters, her plot, but even they can admit that writing is not her strong point. I have no judgment on this. Writers should write what they love, and readers should read what they love. I'm an adult who reads comic books. Again, read what you love.

My issue is when I hear "storytellers" talk about their love of language.

First, I will have to back up.

[A note: a lot of the ideas I express are not my own, or more specifically they are my ideas of others ideas. I can't cite every idea, because once you internalize principles, you forget their source. I know for a fact the idea I'm about to share came from a book, but I've forgotten which one. I never thought I'd go from writing student to blogger.]

As a writer I noticed I had two distinct modes I operated in when creating a story. First would be the daydreaming I did when I could see my characters in my mind, living the story like a movie. I could see my characters fighting, walking down the hall, escaping from villains, or sewing.

The second mode was when I was actually writing, bringing attention to the language I used to express the characters and events I had "dreamed" about. I knew Character A and Character B would fight over A's affair. However, when time to write, I may stall, realizing I needed to find the words, the language, the dialogue, to express this scene.

Critics have a word, serviceable. Serviceable means the prose just merely tells the story (Sally was upset that Dan cheated on her). It lacks the creativity to employ language in such a way that it truly lifts the moment off the page and into the reader's imagination. It's not infused with the emotion and character of that moment.

A theory I learned of considers there are two stages, or phases, to writing. First, is the composition stage. This is where the storyteller thrives. She invents characters, situations, and events; she constructs plot and scene; she orders events; she creates complications and twists.

The second stage is the performance stage. This is the writer's strength. She creates the text; the choice of words, the dialogue, style, tone, and point of view.

Great writers are composers and performers; they are the musicians of narrative, creating a story and performing it on the page. Someone who loves language, which most genre writers claim, strike me as hypocritical when they strike against literary writers for their concern of style. Style is the substance from crafting language.

Often advocates of genre fiction like to go for the old "style over substance" critique. The problem of course is that beautiful prose to a talented literary writer has substance. The stereotype of the flowery sentence with alliteration and beautiful imagery but lacking in saying anything meaningful is not valued in literary circles. Look up great sentences/passages from fiction. Flowery and purple prose may sound beautiful, but literary critics don't fall for it. They want language beautifully expressed (rhythms, imagery, sound techniques...) and with substance (exploring love, life, and death).

Classic passages from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."

"[Janie] was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid."

As for celebrated language with action, research Hemingway's descriptions of bullfighting.

A lot of literary readers, such as myself, are quite underwhelmed as what passes for great prose nowadays. But great stylists are always rare. They are brilliant; they are geniuses. Writers like Woolf and Nabokov are talented. And when one understands the diffrence between plot-narrative and character-narrative, you can see they are great storytellers as well. However, those regarded as strictly being storytellers have talent as well.

Sometimes literary writers label genre writers as plot machines. This suggests that with no soul or creativity we just spit out events at rapid fire. My theory: as a genre writer, I am the rapper of literature: RAP, rapid action poetry. A great genre writer has to form a string of events that connect into an arc, energizing a poetic between character and event; event and world; character and world. Writing Sympathy-B, I am always asking, "What next?" However, I have to generate plot that moves the narrative along on its arc, reveals new sides of characters and moves them along on their journey as well, builds the world, and I can't be redundant. I have to always find a new way for a character to do what's already been done (either in the history of literature or even previously in my story) but still make it feel fresh. A character has one power, and yet each battle needs to feel unique, exploding with character and action and setting in a prose style that makes it all come alive. I compose the choreography for a battle, but then I have to perform the dance through describing the scene and invoking prose that portrays how high energy the scene is. Great storytelling is difficult; writing a novel where events arc into a sequence, sequences arcs into an act, acts arc into a novel, and novels arc into an epic (the case with series) is no easy feat. Tolstoy's War & Peace has a culturally accepted criticism of its war descriptions. Action matters.

Genre writers often say "pretty prose" the same way a womanizer says "pretty girl." It's trivializing. However, if writing a great sentence was so easy, why don't genre writers just tell their suspenseful tales with great flair and style? Because crafting a great sentence is not that easy. Also, a lyrical style often does not suit action sequences (unless you love George R.R. Martin taking several big pages to describe a woman walking through fire).

Commercial literary fiction arose out of a desperate need to make the writer whole, to bring composer and performer, storyteller and writer, back to one creative entity for the sake of the market. Publishers needed fiction that was accessible to the people, breaking from elite high brow circles, but still offering something of literary quality. Anyone who loves the Victorian novel knows that this has been done over and over again, and it's ridiculous to act like the concept is new even if the jargon is. But today's literary culture has had difficulty reconciling the experimental spirit of modernism with more conventional practices. However, read Pride and Prejudice or Bleak House, and you will see what happens when a writer owns his or her full identity as inventor and performer, creating texts that are accessible to a mainstream audience while being worthy of close reading.

Ultimately, we as a society are multi-faced. We talk about the beauty of art being a democracy, but it's just talk. Self-publishing is a democracy; however it is shunned for a lack of quality. In other words, mainstream literary culture would rather see a handful of elites create a small culture of elite fiction (mostly white and heterosexual with minority niches builts around it) rather than endorse a system that is equally open to lower, middle, and upper classes; equally open to minority writers who want to write a detective series instead of a historical oppression narrative; and equally open to a writer who wants to craft a superhero epic where the lead relationship is interracial (black and white) and intersexual (bisexual and gay). (Note: I am the last writer described, but I might write a detective series one day. With self-publishing I feel free. I don't have to worry about industry politics. I don't have to write stories and tuck them away in a drawer, hoping the culture (but really literary New York) changes).

We have two paradigms, each with a problem. Traditional publishing has quality control but fails every year to achieve equality. Self-publishing has equality but every year thousands of generic, poorly edited novels are published. Oh wait, I just read a generic, poorly edited novel from a Big 6 publisher last week. But even if we consider each paradigm at its most ideal, it bothers me that mainstream society chooses elitism over democracy. Shouldn't having to filter varying quality be a worthy, and rather small, cost for achieving our ultimate goal of making publishing universal? The democratic approach allows every reader to decide for themselves what's good. The elite approach works off stereotypes, where a small group determines what's good for everyone.

The hypocrisy of craft is trying to divorce the artist as composer and performer. We all invent characters and events, we all express those inventions through prose. If we think we can only focus on one aspect of our writing identity, then we are not fully committed to our craft. But we all vary in our attention to each phase. However, great writers often do both with a general level of excellence. A great writing performer can make a boy playing with a toy truck seem magical, revealing the substance of such an every day moment through style, making us realize how we take the every day for granted. A great composer can create epics that speak to the imagination of our race, the human race, create portraits of the future that actually move us closer to that vision, and grab the attention of millions without making them realize they are learning the lessons of acceptance and integrity.

Literary writers who divorce conventional storytelling from their writing often crave the audience of the genre writer. They have something to say, but they feel no one is listening. The subtext: They feel people should just listen to whatever they have to say however they feel like expressing it. Readers should just be drawn to creativity. When the writer with high brow tendencies does begin to reconcile his vision for storytelling with mainstream tastes, she often feels ambivalent. To the media, she talks about how proud she is, but then she'll do some intimate interview or blog post sharing how torn she is to have legions of fans every time she writes fiction that isn't exactly how she wanted. It's narcissistic. If you want mass success, you need to figure out what the masses want. Or write your more inaccessible books and value the readers you find. But a lot of literary writers won't be happy until they have both, and it's society's fault (to them). We're not smart enough, schools didn't do their job, the internet and TV are making us dumb.

But challenging books or slower paced, meditative works are a difficult proposition even for literary readers. A novel has to truly capture your interest before you're willing to go on the journey of reading, and re-rereading (and re-reading) the text, unlocking more of its pearls with each pass.

If you want people to listen, you have to talk at their level. If your goal was to get people's attention, considering what gets their attention in the first place should have been a thought when envisioning your novel. It's fine to write for yourself, explore your own style, but if you know you are adopting an approach to craft that defies convention, then you've prioritized creativity over accessibility. It's easy to ignore the demands of the culture while you're writing. But once you want to be published, you can have an "Oh crap" moment. Your awareness of book culture comes crashing in. Accept that. Own it. Know that the readers who will enjoy your creativity are not the dominant force in the market. If you want mainstream readers, then understand that as a part of your vision and keep that in mind as you're developing your ideas of how you will approach character, plot, and narrative. Do you want to be the "real artist" with the small intellectual following, the celebrity with mass appeal, or the writer who reconciles the two? Trying to be "the real artist" with mass appeal would be great. But it's just not about what you want, you have to consider the greater culture.

Personally, I believe you write the stories you love, publish them (there's always a way) and let the readers and critics figure the rest out. You never know what will click or when it will, because it's not up to you. The readers and critics will decide whether or not you are a "real writer" and whether or not you get on the bestsellers list. But ultimately, every writer will have to prioritize their values. No one is entitled to anything. Novels with mass appeal often don't have mass followings. Novels that defy convention sometimes do (albeit maybe posthumously). Key modernist writers have been in print for almost a century, and not just because of academia. I bought my copy of To the Lighthouse from Barnes & Noble. But even so, why would you be snobby over a prestigious American institution adopting your work? What writer should judge who their readers are? Whether a college professor or a housewife, a reader is a reader.

Genre writers who divorce the writing from their storytelling often crave for the respect of the literary writer. But when a writer reconciles the two, bringing as much vision to forming characters and plot as she does to expressing that plot with a regard, a true love, for language, you enhance the level of your work. A science fiction action writer may never need high lyrical prose, but she can bring a greater degree of rhythm and vitality to the writing she already pens. It may not win favor from literary types who stereotype great writing as lyrical and meditative, but who cares? They were never your readers to begin with. Do it because you strive to reach deeper levels of craft for your fiction and let your readers rejoice in reaping the fruit.

The novel philosophizing housekeeping and the great epic traveling on a magical quest work together, revealing the infinite possibilities of the novel, capturing the imaginations of generations. There are so many subcultures, cultures within cultures within cultures, where we as a society need many different kinds of stories imagined. Mainstream publishing thinks the general mass are the only readers (and often treats them as one reader), because to them those are the only readers who can bring in numbers significant to them. But as society becomes freer, expression becomes more diverse and if the old institutions can't adapt, new ones will arise. So find the story in the mundane, and find the substance in the explosion.

 

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Craft of Fiction: Vision (Element 0)

When discussing the craft of fiction, my professor asked us to list the elements of fiction, what craft points did she think we would discuss. She was making a point. Even though we had never sat in a class and had lessons, our experience as readers and literature students had already set a foundation. True to convention, we went for the big two: character and plot.

However, when my formal education in writing was over and I became like everyone else, learning from the haphazard experiences of life and perception, my writing did not click until I discovered something else. I knew the craft, but my stories never came together. I had the character but not the plot. I had the plot but not the character. I had the scene but not the narrative. I lacked vision. I didn't have an overall sense of what I wanted to accomplish.

The elements of crafts are tools, but what can carpenter do with boards and a hammer if he has no idea what he wants to create? Once I had a vision for my story, the writing flowed, the elements of craft reorganized and morphed into a unique palette of creativity which helped me express each story as something unique.

The vision for a sci-fi epic is not the same as the vision for a poetic novella. Once you know what you want to write, you will know how to approach the craft of character, narrative, and prose to express that story. It can change. If you remain open to possibilities, if you resist the urge to limit craft into some one-way-fits-all notions, so you can bring the colossal into the finite for your ego's gratification, then you can write anything. You can write a novel where a woman spends 200 pages contemplating divorce before going to bed, and you can write a 700 page doorstopper filled with lust, betrayal, and death. If you feel you need permission, look to history, look to all that has been written, look to the classics of every genre. Anyone who says a good story is one thing is ignorant. Anyone who strikes against beautiful prose or hard-boiled action is limiting the possibilities of our art to validate themselves. They don't serve expression; they serve themselves.

There is a difference between "craft" and "convention." However, many conflate the two. Craft is universal. Every tradesman has his tools, yet they all create different things. Virginia Woolf and George Eliot each had the craft of characters, yet went about creating their fictional humans in very different ways, in very different styles, through very different narratives.

Convention is a culturally prescribed ways of employing craft. The three act structure of beginning, middle, and end (with their own rules of what should happen in each section) is a convention. The rules for structuring genre fiction are romances. Often the best fiction, through creative uses of craft, twists conventions. When writers make convention their craft, their stories are often predictable and lacking in originality. Everyone knows what is going to happen, because they know the convention. As you learn craft, internalizing it more deeply, you will more successfully subvert the norms of your chosen genre, expressing your own unique vision. You will develop an artistic signature, your own convention, made by you for your stories.

So first think about the kinds of fiction you want to write. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the answer is on your bookshelf. What you are passionate about reading is what you will be passionate about writing. Literary readers who try to write cozy mysteries often fail. Thriller readers who try to write epic family sagas often fail. Your identity as a writer has already been created. Your years of reading and falling in love with fiction has already given you an internalized idea of how fiction should be, how it should work. Your task is to cultivate those feelings into an explicit understanding. But remember, your understanding is to guide you in how to write YOUR novels, not tell everyone else how to write theirs.

And even so, you may still travel far outside your desired reading to find your story. With video games, television, comic book, and movies, you may realize your story lies in one or an amalgam of forms. You read Dickens but love fantasy video games? So write an epic fantasy filled with a riotous cast of wild and quirky characters, following a young boy trying to free his father from a corrupt prison system.

Once you know what you want to write, you will be able to go through each element of craft and know how you wish to approach it. You will know how you will develop your characters, how long your descriptions of setting will be, how to pace the action, whether or not to structure the narrative through character or plot points, how "big" the events need to be and so on. If this has you lost, don't worry. We will be discussing this as we move forward.

Vision does not mean planning every detail in micromanaging fashion. It means having a general understand in what you want to accomplish. For my first novel, I was able to start writing once I knew I want lyrical prose exploring the mundane thoughts of characters with elements of soap opera weaved in. For my second novel, I was ready to begin once I knew I wanted a superhero soap opera in a world on the brink of science fiction. Once I started writing though, I let this go and just wrote. I let my story develop in new and unexpected ways, trusting that my vision was not the main idea but a quiet guiding force. As my superhero soap opera birth surprises in characters and plot direction, I allowed my universe to expand. However, my original vision was still at the core of what I was doing. If I lost my way, I returned to my vision and continued building upward and away. If someone criticized my work, I used my vision as a measuring stick. If the critique enhanced my vision, I contemplated the idea. If the criticism contradicted my vision, I kept moving forward.

For now, just know it's okay to have no idea what you want to write. And if you think you do, remain open. You have a lot of years as a writer ahead. As you learn craft and experience new stories, you may expand into universes you could not have imagined now.

 

 

Photo Credit: Polispoliviou | © Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Self-Publishing: New Mentality, New Vitality, New Plan

A fresh start. Dabbling in self-publishing in 2012, going for gold in 2013, I learned a lot. It was stressful. I read a lot of blogs, tried serializing a novel, tried retail pricing, tried Kindle Select, tried perma-free...tried everything but writing another story. I made excuses: I blamed myself, I blamed the society we lived in. Finally, I just got over the whole thing and came full circle.

I remembered that I was drawn to self-publishing for one reason: freedom. I wanted to write the books I wanted to write and see if they could find an audience. In other words, I wanted every writer's dream. Instead, I went from worrying about what agents wanted to read to worrying about what kind of story would shoot me up the Kindle charts. I never fell for it though. I never could. When I sit and write society goes away. I only know how to write the story I have within me. I just stressed and worried every minute I wasn't putting pen to paper.

The beautiful thing is that once I run myself into the ground, I finally surrender. I stopped thinking about how I needed to bang out a novel every three month, how I needed to accumulate reviews, how I needed to please BookBubs so they'd take mercy on me and accept my novel for an ad. I finally said, "Screw it."

Once that happened, I started writing again. It may only be a page here and there, but it gets done. Sometimes I even write two. Sometimes three. I'm building myself back up. I get more sleep. I feel rested. I feel better. I don't binge eat ice cream. I remember the life I wanted to live, my idea of the writer's life, and I'm slowly fulfilling it. No time like the present even if everything suggests I shouldn't be taking it so easy. We all try to fight to peace, thinking a perfect moment will come once we have what we want. No, we create that moment. We don't fight for it, we lay back into it. We don't push; we surrender.

So with my new mindset I revisited the blogs I had read on self-publishing and found some new ones. No longer looking for a one stop solution I took it all in then came up with a plan that fits my personality, values, and budget. Everyone tells you what to do, but they don't ever consider who you are. They say write at least 3 books a month, make them as long as possible, set it for free, and if you don't like it...then learn to like it. A writer is supposed to be an individual, a creative entity with ideas, emotions and expressions, yet everyone says, "Get over it." I now reply, "No. I won't get over being myself. I couldn't even if I tried." If wanted to pander to some stereotype of the modern reader (usually white, heterosexual, and middle class), then I would just have kept trying to get an agent. I would let the industry in New York tell me what they want to read, what they think people want to read and write that. There was no point in trading one set of standards for another. Indie means independent, my chance to follow my vision, my rules. If I valued succeeding by other's terms over failing by my own, I would not have self-published in the first place. But I still have so far to go before a judgment can be made. And even so, I still feel more inspired, more hopeful now, then I ever did querying agents, knocking door to door, on a street that only had so many doors.

So first, I unpublished my novel. I'm starting from scratch. Smashwords implores writers to never unpublish. I don't care. Every day, I proof read 1-5 pages. I changed my frontis design. I contacted my cover designer and asked him to upgrade the ebook cover to a paperback cover as well. I want the most professional product I can create/afford. I imagine my book in bookstore. I'm dreaming big, but I no longer feel crushed by its burdening weight. Instead I feel free. Before, due to expenses (and being in a big rush) I just bought the ebook version then used a photo editor to create a black square with the promotional text as a back cover. Overall it worked out. Learning how to write copy was a new skill, and it took many revisions over many months to get it right. Now that I have, I'm ready to have it on a professional paperback cover.

Also, thanks to researching new blogs, I encountered a book formatter. I think I will give them a shot. I am proud of my design, but it will save me a lot of work to have someone else do it. The price is within budget. But I will see how they do for paperback design. There are some tweaks to my design I would like to see.

With pricing, I had joined the race to the bottom. I started at 2.99 with free Kindle Select promotions and hundreds of dollars in ads. Then after no results, I just set it to perma-free. I enjoyed waking up and seeing some movement, even if it was a copy or two. Overall, I had given away a thousand copies of my book over quite a few months. With the split version (first half free, second half priced), I had 4 sales. However, I got over it and just put the whole book back together and set it free until I could figure things out. Whatever I gained by seeing something happening, I lost in pride and self-respect. As I regained my confidence, reconnected to my dream to be a career writer, free just wasn't working anymore. I was ready to go retail. My book may not be perfect, but no one's is. How many times have I paid to read a traditionally published book that was generic and poorly edited? All the time. Heck, sometimes, I still fell in love with the story. My  book isn't perfect, but no one is better than me just because they were published by a corporation. Price is an economic function, not a judgment of quality. A 250 page novel can cost as much as a 1000 page novel with no regard of whether it's a classic, a dud, or even if it's full of typos. Readers pay for the chance to experience the work, to find out what's behind the cover. If they don't like it, they just don't buy any more from that writer/publisher.

I experienced this with making music. I work with a studio. If I don't like the music I still have to pay them. I hired them for a service and as long as they produce something, they get paid for their time and effort. I am not paying for quality. However, if their work does not meet my standards, I don’t recommend them to other songwriters, and I would never hire them again. If that makes sense to me, then why didn't I remember that when I became a writer? It wasn't easy putting myself on the other side of the dynamic, to move from customer to content provider.

I have the character and integrity to pen the best stories I can, to fulfill my vision on the page, to package my story in the highest quality book possible. I have the sense now to save my money (even if it takes a couple of months) to do it right and to find the best services I can while sticking to my budget. I do what I know I can, then find someone experienced and in my budget to do the rest. Sometimes, I have to make judgment calls. I may have to prioritize the big picture over the little picture. This happened with hiring an editor. The costs would be a thousand dollars or more. That's more than 2-3 months of savings for me. A lot of successful writers have mandated the necessity of an editor; yet when I checked their past blog posts they didn't have editors. First they became successful then used the profits to hire an editor. Ultimately, an executive decision had to be made. Is the book readable? Will a reader find so many errors that it corrupts their experience? Am I paying a thousand dollars just to have the occasional grammar error corrected? Is that worth it? The art of business, the business of art.

In several months I will relaunch my novel, my career as a writer. What next? More writing. I'm over feeling the need to constantly be doing something. I think that's how a lot of writer's feel. So many verbs. You have TO PROMOTE, TO MARKET, TO TWEET, TO BLOG. And all new writers ask the same question: HOW??????? Everyone tells you to use social media. But what's the point of posting messages to no one? How do you get people to like your page? And if you do, how do you then get them to buy your book? I did a facebook ad for a free book. I got a 116 likes, but no downloads. I couldn't even give my book away. Besides, don't you need to get readers first, then the readers who like you will sign up for your page? Wait, wasn’t the purpose of joining facebook to find readers? Why does everything feel out of order? It makes no sense. Whenever you ask a successful writer how they found readers, they either lie or have no clue. Writers who say they found readers on social media are usually wrong. The readers they already had joined them on social media and shared their posts and tweets. Most successful readers, when being honest, will admit their blog did not bring in enough readers to generate a living wage for them.

When writers tell the truth, they say things like, "I don't know how I succeeded. I posted a story and it just sold," "I don't know why Amazon chose me for a promotion," "I set the first book for free and it downloaded 25,000 copies. When it went back to being priced, it just sold." When people are active in generating their success, I really only heard two stories: They did a free promotion, spent several hundred or more on ads like Bookbubs, and so many free copies were downloaded that it became very visible in the Kindle Store. When the sale was over, people saw the book and bought it. The second story? A writer who was already very active in an online community (let's say for cat lovers), wrote a book about a cat, told their online community, and they all ran to Amazon to buy it. Finally, came perma-free stories. People tried the book, liked it, and bought others.

Those stories are all great. Any success story is great. But joining a community for several months, more like years, just waiting for the day you can finally tell them you're a writer, is deceptive and ridiculous. Usually, you just end up drained. If you are not into online forums, you shouldn't frequent them. It's disrespectful to yourself for wasting the time and disrespectful to the people who gathered there to share what they love. However, if you can generate a natural love for the forum and it share a passion in its topic, go ahead and put in hours and hours over months and years, slowly building a following. Personally, I couldn't do it. And thankfully, I don't think I have to. With self-publishing, writers can even promote and builds audience in whatever way suits their personality and values. It's wonderful. That's what I'm banking on anyway. But I've heard so many success stories, the possibility is a reasonable belief.

My issue with perma-freeing the first book of a series is that it gridlocks your series. If you write five books and Amazon discovers you, they can't feature you in a deal. But then again, waiting around for Amazon or Apple or Barnes and Noble to feature you just may not work for some. Heck, even I am not working with any expectation of that being a goal. You write, and if it happens...you celebrate. If it doesn't...so what? Keep writing, keep publishing.

So ultimately, I saw what was right in front of me. People post books, they sell. I, like so many, kept wondering HOW. But maybe that's the beauty of it. We don't know HOW, because it's not our place. We don't do anything. People say it's magic, but maybe it's just the internet. A writer publishes his/her first book, and it starts selling right away. Usually, the book doesn't sell at all. But the writer keeps writing. One day the fifth book is published and BAM the first sale. Then a second. Then it builds. Something is happening, but just because we don't know what it is doesn't mean it's dumb luck. It just means it's not actually on us to control. The greatest power we have is to write books and publish them as professionally as possible. If you want to write your own vision, go ahead. If you want to write want you think readers want to read, again go ahead. You are a free individual, to each their own. You control what you write, you control how good the book looks, you control where to distribute. Let the internet do the rest. At some point readers will encounter your novel. And readers are varied. You are no long subscribing to the limited tastes of the elite minority in New York. Readers will love you for being unique and radical, and readers will love you for following strict formulas. They will hate you as well. But the number of book lovers is so large that given time, it seems unfathomable that you can't find several thousand people to love you for being who you are, who you've chosen to be as a writer. Hundreds of agents confined to one subculture. Millions of readers shaping many levels of cuture. I'll take my chances directly appealing to the readers. They're the goal anyway.

So the internet is complex. We don't understand how it works, but it's science, not magic. We write books, they get posted under new release sections, and readers surprise us by buying our books. A handful of readers take that first chance on us. We can use discounts, free promotions, and ads to get things started or to accelerate success, but the foundation is the same: we write, we publish, and we set up more science (social media, newsletters) to further establish our success, to turn the seeming randomness of the web into something more orderly and deliberate. Once the algorithms do their thing, we get a chance to establish some control that is all our own when it comes to promotion. But social media doesn't seem to create success, it's another log on the already lit fire.

As I move forward, we'll see which path I am meant to take. It's like Billy Jean, you only know which way to go with each step. When you walk on one square, it lights up, you see the next one ahead. I may republish this first book, all professional and at retail price, and it may take off. And it may not. I publish the second book at retail price, and it may take off. And it may not. Third book... fourth book... fifth book... In general though, it's easier to lower prices than raise them. I will start at retail, then experiment with various forms of discounting, then with ad buying.

Maybe I'll bring in 2 or 3 sales a day for a month. Then maybe 10 the next. Zero the next. 250 the next. Maybe the books will lie dormant for a year. Or maybe, once the second book is out, I "magically" get chosen for a sale on Amazon. But it's not magic. The few sales I got kept me on the best sellers list long enough to catch the attention of Amazon's editors. They looked at my book. It was professional, and it was at a price where it could look good at a discount. It's happened. I've seen writers with two books skyrocket up the charts thanks to selection for an Amazon sale. That's what happened to A.G. Riddle.

How patient should I be, publishing book after book at 5.99 or 7.99 when other books are flying off the shelf at 3.99 and 2.99? There is no answer, because no one can predict the future. After ten books published and no sales, I may discount my first book or set it free and skyrocket up the charts, 10,000 sold. But maybe If I had just held out and gone for book eleven, BAM, 25,000 sold. You make decisions. You set a standard for success. If you are happy with the results, keep going. If you are unhappy, change it up. I'll discount the book when I'm ready, when I'm not happy with my progress. If I become unhappy after book 2, I may do it then. If it works...great. If not...keep writing and try discounting again with book 3. But maybe that first failed sale makes me happy with just writing, building my list. At the end of the day, we try to seem rational, but it's all beyond us. And we hate it. We want to control it. We aren't doing what's rational, we're doing what we want to do and justifying it with our own logic. Some are happy with organic growth, some want to work the system. Many have failed and succeeded either way. But as long as you are writing and publishing, you can never claim to have failed. You may lose the battle (a bad sale, a slow sales month, no sales at all), but the quest goes on. You've lost when you quit. But even then, as long as your books are published, there's still a chance you wake up twenty years later to a $50,000 deposit in your back account from Amazon: the science of writing in the Internet Age.

Hurt: The Oppression of Maturity

I am a lyricist. I concern myself with the language of songs. I utilize subtext, concrete details, and introspection to create portraits of people and tell stories. I write the lyrics then seek composers, producers, and musicians to create the musical language, the emotional environment the lyrical story resides in.

Before deciding to commercially release Hurt, I pitched it to TAXI.com in hopes that they would in turn pitch it to A&R executives, who would then in turn pitch it to artists. The original plan was not to be a record label doing indie releases but to be a music publisher, making songs for other artists.

There are two defining moments that led to this change in course:

1) I kept hearing that demos needed to be fully produced. However, what was the point of making a commercial record just to have it re-recorded and left in a file. Once I heard the lush instrumentation and pro-vocal, I'm supposed to just sit on it for the rest of my life?

2) The feedback when I pitched Hurt via TAXI

The TAXI screener heard "Hurt" and did not like my "subtext." He or she felt the song said that it was immature to be emotional. Furthermore, the person suggested that I shouldn't write songs for female singers alone, that I should take on a female cowriter to review my work.

I am not taking on a female cowriter just to have someone watch my politics. I would work with any talented songwriter and never choose someone because of their gender. That is an insult to me and female songwriters. She could be fulfilling her talent in so many other ways, not just revising my lyrics. Secondly, if this screener's idea of subtext is reading the first line of the chorus (I don't have to be mature) in a very literal manner, then we have an issue for what passes as subtext.

I could have been more literal. I could have said: I don't have to be demure. But I chose the word "mature" specifically because of how loaded with subtext it is. (full lyrics)

People today have the tendency to use the word to mean two things at the same time:

1) to act childishly in a temper tantrum sort of way

2) to be calm 2a) to not take things personally 2b) to never get upset

For example: A woman walks in and sees her boyfriend humping her best friend in her very own bed. She yells, screams, cries. Man says: "You see, this is why I didn't tell you. I knew you couldn't handle it. Can we be mature and discuss this like adults?" Woman replies: "Mature? I don't have to be mature. I loved a love that was unreturned. My heart's been burned and I've learned it's okay to be hurt."

What does the boyfriend really mean when he says "mature?" Does he really think that he should have been able to sit his girlfriend down and have a rational discussions as to why he should be able to screw her best friend in their bed when she's not home. "Okay," he says. "Just listen. You're gone, working a lot. We're not doing it as much. So maybe Sheila can fill in for you in the bedroom until you feel like doing it again."

Most men are not this stupid. This is why they hid the affair in the first place. They knew you would be rightfully upset, that they were doing wrong, and that they would need to hide their activities. It's an attempt to have their cake and eat it too. He's trying to devalue his girlfriend's reaction by caller her immature so he can force her to calm down, fill her head with some bullshit reasoning, and maybe keep her from breaking up with him.

In other words, he's indirectly calling her immature in hopes of manipulating her into calming down. He's trying to gain the higher ground in the fight and resorting to playing her emotions because he has no reasonable defense. He's saying: "You being upset is a childish response. Listen to me, I'm an adult. You can tell I am because of how rational I sound. And adults discuss things calmly, right? So if you are calm then we can conform to this idea that adults are calm, and then I can proceed to talk you out of inevitably dumping me."

This kind of logic is also used to justify racism, homophobia, and misogyny. Whenever a minority gets upset about a black teen being gun downed on the side walk or a woman being treated like a second class citizen, there is always someone there rolling their eyes, acting above it, denouncing those who care as being "emotional" or being "too sensitive." How many laments do you hear over the proliferation of thinkpieces. It's just oppression on top of oppression. They're trying to convince you that your feelings are wrong, because they don't want to face the issues. But who's wrong? The person who cries over a generation of talent going unrecognized because of their race, gender or sexuality or the person who just doesn't care enough to do anything about it? Maybe both are wrong. A happy medium is necessary. However, I would say the latter is more wrong. The person who tries to marginalize the concern is more responsible for perpetuating oppression than the person who gets angry about it.

The word "maturity" is a loaded gun. Most of the time when an adult uses it against another adult, they are being patronizing with the intent of micromanaging a person's response for their own gain. It's something narcissists also do to devalue others' feelings so they can focus on their own concerns.

People cry over their favorite team losing a football game; yet if you get upset at discrimination just see the hate and derogatory statements that come your way. See how quickly bloggers dismiss the ignorance of their favorite celebrities so they can talk about the music. Pitchfork ignored R. Kelly's alleged sexual abuse of young girls. We all have for decades now. It's an issue.

The same psychological forces we use to contain people on the level of every day life are mirrored in the larger culture.

***

Now, if someone's reply is "I don't have to be mature," are they really admitting that they are being immature and childlike? No. Often times, we cast off someone's judgment of us by actually owning it.

Man: "Wow, you are such a bitch."
Woman: "Maybe I am. But we are still going to discuss this matter. You are not off the hook."

In the context of "Hurt," the idea of maturity and the line I don't have to be mature are not to be taken literally. The story of the song is that an abusive ex-boyfriend has reached out to his victim, his ex-girlfriend, to tell her the exciting news: he's in a wonderful new relationship, and he's truly in love. Our young girl, the protagonist, has always been quite meek. She bit her tongue and never expressed how hurt she was, but something about this man standing before her, talking to her like nothing has happened, causes an eruption of feelings.

This story is told in lines like I was the timid mouse and my cries as you burned down the house which both get at her meek nature and abuse, respectively. Also, her feelings that she SHOULD be able to accept this exes new romance, talking to her abuser like he's just an old friend, reveals how conflicted she is about the oppressiveness of maturity. As a victim of abuse, she has been brainwashed into thinking that being quiet and agreeable is the same thing as maturity. Where do you think that belief came from? Her boyfriend is yelling and carrying on, but his maturity is never questioned? She just thinks that she should be able to be calm.

So the protagonist struggles with the same idea of maturity that we as a society do. But that doesn't mean that the song as a whole work of art, I as a writer, endorse this opinion.

Vaults of feelings unlocked / the castle's falling from the air

Our young girl is opening up her heart to her feelings and hence stepping into reality. She is finally seeing her life situation for what it is: destructive and hurtful. What's immature about that? Between the casting aside of disillusionment and the very mature employment of poetic language, sweeping melodies, and lush, elegant, orchestral composition, the overall sound of the song is quite adult.

To step into adulthood is to cast aside youthful delusions and to see the world for what it is. You see love where there is love, and hate where there is hate. You know when you are happy; you do not deny when you are sad. Ultimately, in Hurt, I am asking for a differentiation between two kinds of maturity:

1) Socialized behavioral maturity (the idea directly employed in the song) where people expect everyone who disagrees with them to act like emotionless drones and to discuss things in super matter of fact terms. If the protagonist of the song got excited over his new relationship, I doubt the ex boyfriend would complain about her being emotional. If she screamed with glee, he would have been very happy.

and 2) emotional maturity where we know how we feel and verbally express it in a way that's honest without violence (the true subtext)

In other words, the most mature thing our young girl could is to refuse to not be mature. She is not actually saying she is immature; she is casting aside her exe's manipulations. Just because he expects her to be happy for him, doesn't mean she has to be (and it doesn't make her wrong). By owning her feelings regardless of how society may view her, regardless of how much her ex-boyfriend may try to play mind games to gain power over her reactions, she chooses to own the fact that she is hurt. And only by owning the pain does she have the chance to move through it into something happier.

The subtext of art is in reading what is said to determine what is not said. In Hurt the subtext is actually paradoxical to the actual text in a general sense: It is sometime mature to not be mature. But if you move in closer, into something more specific, differentiating between kinds of maturity, and you see that emotional maturity is valued the maturity of demureness. Being calm has it's place, but sometimes, for you self-respect, you do need to cause a commotion. So go on, be immature.

 

Liam Payne: Divorcing Civil Rights from Family Values

First some points that are hopefully common sense:

1) Publicly complimenting a z-lister after a homophobic scandal is not a good idea. You have to know that's going to get a lot of media attention.

2) If you are a public figure, you do not have a personal twitter account. Your social media is just an extension of your business and brand.

3) Young celebrities really want to have their cake and eat it too. On one hand, they want to be respected as true artists, musicians, and want people to think they are intelligent and creative. However, as soon as the shit hits the fan, they start arguing how they are still young and just trying to figure it all out.

3a) Young celebrities don't complain about being in the media until it turns against them. They have no problem taking months to promote their albums and endorsement deals. However, once the media wants to analyze their beliefs, they think the media is petty and needs to focus on more important subjects. Your album release isn't important. You endorsing a family known for bigotry? Much more important.

4) Pop culture often uses, misuses, and abuses the idea of Freedom of Speech. The first amendment was not a free pass to say whatever you want without judgment. It was created to ensure that American citizens could express their grievances about the government without fear of negative repercussions. Celebrities use freedom of speech to suggest that no one can feel negatively about their opinions. However, if freedom of speech protects Kanye West's twitter rants, then it also protects everyone who disagrees with him. Freedom of speech is not one sided.

4a) People calling you out on twitter does not violate your first amendment right. Freedom of speech is an issue of constitutional law, and people not liking your opinion is not a Supreme Court case in the making. Until someone sues you for your tweet, the first amendment is a non-factor.

4b) A person's character is ultimately determined by what they do and say, or lack thereof. It is a rare privilege when people are actually judged by their actions with no consideration of their gender, race, or sexuality. This attitude that an "opinion is an opinion" and therefore all opinions should be taken lightly is simplistic. Opinions/beliefs/values can be wrong. Slavery is wrong. Prejudice is wrong. Racism is wrong. These are not just opinions, these are deeply engrained systems that hold some people are inherently inferior to others. If you are a citizen of the free world, and especially an American citizen, you have an obligation as a citizen to believe that freedom and equality are inherent to ever human being. It's an odd paradox, but yes, freedom has it's limits. You can speak freely, but you can't slander. You can live freely, but you can't systematically oppress entire groups of people. You can do as you please, but you can't murder someone. You can do as you please, but anyone can feel however they please about you doing as you please.

To summarize: Freedom doesn't just protect you. It also protects those who disagree. But through the principles of citizenship and rationality, we are give a framework for thinking, for developing beliefs, that guides us to make good/right decisions. If you fall out of that framework, you are supposed to have the values to change course, not just keep making poor judgments.

***

With those points out of the way, let's get to the main question behind the Liam Payne/Duck Dynasty debacle: Can you support someone's "family values" but not their politics? Is their a difference between being a homophobe and being a great family man?

Liam Payne said he valued the way the Robertson's kept their family together. Personally, my belief, which could be wrong, is the following: The greatest family value is acceptance, true love. Family members may bicker and fight, but at the end of the day everyone feels UNCONDITIONALLY loved and ultimately accepted.

Can the Robertson family claim this? No. If the integrity of your family is dependent on everyone being heterosexual, then that is not unconditional love. If a member of your family is gay and fears your judgment, hates themselves because they think their disgusting and will lead men to hump beasts, and/or sit in quiet agony as they live closeted to maintain family order, then family values have failed.

Furthermore, there is no admirable family value in a father teaching his children superiority and hate. Bigotry being the bonds that unite a family is not something a free world should value.

Gay people have families. Gay people are sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers. To say that you can separate gay civil rights from family values automatically suggests that you can divorce gay people from family. However, just because no one in your family is gay (or has revealed themselves to be gay) and can therefore be happy does not mean you have great family values. Sooner or later, someone in your family is going to be gay. And if their sexuality brings your happy family crashing, or reveals it to just be the facade that it is, then your values were not the bricks that built your home...but instead just a bunch of flimsy cards stacked together to resemble a house.

***

The secondary question behind the scandal:

Let's assume family values wasn't the right word. Let's just say Liam Payne is a fan. Every human being has probably enjoyed the music of a womanizer, racist, or homophobe. Is it okay to just ignore politics and enjoy someone's work?

It depends on one factor: can the said public entertainer keep their mouths shut about their beliefs. I'm not talking about violating their freedom of speech by having an outside party shut them up. No, I mean: Can an individual exercise the self control necessary to not state their politics, whether rationally or religiously justified?

If a celebrity uses the public platform they have built to state their politics, then they stopped being an entertainer and have become a politician. Also they put Americans in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to decide A) if they're going to react and B) what it says about them if they do or don't? Our nation's character is defined by what people do publicly and hence also by our public reaction. Our condemnation of George Zimmerman says something about us, and our slut shaming also says something about us. If we let incident X go and fight Incident Y, then that says we value Y more than X. It doesn't matter how we feel. What matters is what we do. The thoughts we keep inside do not determine our character.

At minimum, we can all agree that Liam Payne thought civil rights was something that did not have to be addressed when he engaged Robertson on Twitter. You may think that is right or wrong, but he prioritized being a fan of a TV show to the point he neglected the value of equality.

Let's illustrate through some more extreme examples. Using extremes can often help clarify the ethics of a situation.

1) If a man said Hitler was a great leader and commended him on unifying Germany as a great nation, would you question this man's character?

2) If you met George Zimmerman on the street and he was very nice to you, would you become his friend? Would you invite him to parties and be seem laughing at his jokes while out at lunch?

3) If a pedophile sang a song that was beautiful, would you go to his concert?

If you can consistently answer "yes" or "no" to these questions, then you have a guiding moral that shapes your actions. This moral can guide you even in smaller instances. If you go back and forth, then you are probably trying to justify your feelings.

Living in a society where gay youth are driven to hanging themselves because of bullying and are attacked by groups of men for holding hands in public, there's a reason why we as a society have to care when a powerful teen role model aligns himself, even accidentally, with a homophobe. In pop culture, "accidental" doesn't matter. What you do is what you do. You are not entitled to have society fish around trying to find ways to give you the benefit of the doubt. Even if Payne's greatest offense was marginalizing the Roberton's scandal to publicly support Duck Dynasty as a show, that's enough to send up a red flag.

Is Payne accurate in assuming the media was lazy to not contact him and ask him a bunch of questions about something he said, not in an interview, but on twitter? It doesn't matter. As a public figure, you're beliefs and values need to be clear in how you express yourself.

From Stoner to Diversity: How A Few Words Can Send You Over the Edge

“Many [books] were overlooked. Most are forgotten. This is not a tragedy. It’s realistic. It is ordinary.” – Claire Cameron, A Forgotten Bestseller: The Saga of John Williams’s Stoner.

Stoner, since entering American mainstream consciousness (or the literary fringes of it), has been on my radar as a book I want to read. I’m not sure why. On paper it does not strike me as something I would normally be drawn to; however, as I perused the sample I found the writing engaging. Yet, I’m still not sure I’ll ever read it. How will I get my hands on a copy? When I have money for books, it never dawns on me to buy it. However, when someone writes about it, I feel inclined to read it.

This post is not about Stoner. It’s about the above quote. It made me angry when I read it. I can’t read the full article, because I am fixated on the quote. For me, that quote embodies everything wrong with intellectual thought and the main quality of Western thought that is setting our country back. That’s a lot. Many may see what I see in the quote. Other may see it and think I’m overreacting. And finally, many may not get it at all. It’s mainly my perception, and this quote triggered strong feelings because of a pattern I’ve noticed for years that seems responsible for a lack of positive change in our society.

“This is not a tragedy. It’s realistic. It is ordinary.”

This statement creates a polarization between TRAGEDY and REALISTIC/ORDINARY, and hence also creates a synonymizing effect between REALISTIC and ORDINARY. This statement takes a lot for granted:

1) Tragedy is not ordinary; Tragedy is not realistic. This is spoken like a privileged person. Only someone growing up in relative comfort could assume that the opposite of ordinary and realistic is tragedy, that tragedy is defined by being rare in occurrence and is somehow beyond the “real.” Someone living in a country that’s bombed and raided weekly could not make this statement. Someone who has suffered back to back deaths in their family at a very young age also could not make this statement.

2) The normal should be accepted. This is the subtext of the statement. That if it’s normal for great books to be overlooked, then great books being over looked should not be judged. It’s not good; it’s not bad–it just is. All things that are as they are should just be viewed as they are–no more, no less.

This attitude is where society is falling apart. It’s apathy. It’s refusing to have beliefs, values, and convictions, because society does not reflect those beliefs, values, and convictions. People question freedom, because there is no freedom. They don’t believe in freedom in principle, they only believe in it to the extent they have it. That’s not how principles work. Being “realistic” has become an excuse to not be visionary. Visionaries form pictures of how the world should be based on values then work to move the world towards that picture. Its hard, daunting work to proceed from vision the further it is from reality. Realistic people apparently only create self-fulfilling prophecies where nothing changes because (warning: run on) a belief in “what is just is” keeps them from doing something when change requires movement and no movement happens unless something changes but nothing changes unless you do something which you aren’t going to do because “what is just is”…and on and on the merry-go-round goes. The point is that principles are ideas we hold of value based on abstract ideas; they shouldn’t be negotiations with how the world is. You believe in freedom because you believe freedom is right, not because someone outside of you has confirmed it by letting you say whatever you want.

Realists are defeatists. They acknowledge a problem and assume, since the problem is bigger than them, they can’t, and hence won’t, do anything about it. Then, so they don’t have to get angry, they deflate the importance of the issue with a kind of intellectual numbness: “Oh well, what can be done?”

Genius should be supported. So if we live in a world where that’s not the norm, then something is wrong and we should try to fix it. Even if we can’t help every genius, just helping the few we can is still better than none. It’s better for all of us. The individual that helps has good character. The person helped can pay their success forward and help another. And we as a society can progress. But people are so all or nothing. If they are not the saviors that create revolution then they’ll just be the followers who maintain the status quo. If they can’t be self-important; they’ll be self-deflating. Too many people act as if they can’t help everyone, then that makes them failures. I’m sure the people they help would disagree. Sometimes change is a nudge, but everyone wants to burn in revolt. A nudge hear and there will cause more change than waiting generations for a martyr.

It’s hyperbole to call undiscovered genius a tragedy. However, it’s a shame, a problem, something the publishing industry needs to actively work to resolve. I wish I could find the source to this anecdote, but I’ll just go it from memory:

A man wondered if a great novel could be recognized if not written by a brand name author. So he took an award winning novel, put his name on it, and proceeded to be rejected over and over again. When he told the agents the story, they just shrugged. It was the norm, and it happens.

No one cared. Apathy. Life is the way it is. Our country was founded in revolution and principle. Our founding fathers envisioned a new government, a new country based on principles, and all of this has culminated in ideological laziness and limp spines.

The quote starting this post does not feel thought out to me. It feels falsely poetic, like it’s more concerned with signifying truth than The Truth. There isn’t a sense the writer is aware of the levels and resonance the statement has–it’s actual meaning. That’s just my impression. So many people say things that are punchy and intellectual that only fall apart with just a micro-scalpel of scrutiny. People say things that are easy to say for ulterior motives, even if subconscious. They want to win cultural intellectual brownie points, or worse, they are deflecting attention away from an important discussion they don’t want to have. Most of the time, I get the impression they are justifying an emotionally reactive response. They have an opinion they haven’t actually though much about, but they try to quickly validate it with something that sounds intelligent.

The sentiment of the quote resounds in all aspects of artistic and cultural life. The underlying apathy is implicit especially in the lack of diversity in mainstream publishing and promoting. Ask an agent or editor why there isn’t more diversity, and they usually respond with “I just don’t know.” In personal life, a man can search the African desert looking for a scorpion under the sand, yet always have an excuse as to why he doesn’t see his own children. In political discussions, black people are called sensitive for being offended by offensive depictions of themselves by people who cause an uproar and cry for change when the umpire makes a bad call during the Super Bowl.

When people want change; change happens. People pursue what they are passionate about. If they say they want diversity, and there is no diversity, then it means, despite intellectually knowing its importance, their heart just is not in it. Then they’ll come up with a bunch of reasonable excuses to justify it after the fact. “I’m sorry, honey. I can’t come today. I have to work so I can make money and take care of you.” Yet he found time to find a rare beetle in a rain forest.

The lack of diversity is not difficult to understand. It can be quantified; yet people keep it complex and abstract so they can signify caring by talking about it just to justify doing nothing because it’s such a tough issue.

The entities involved in promoting diversity are the same ole entities that have always been there: writers, agents, editors, reader. I’ll be focusing largely on racial diversity; however I am referring to all diversity: racial, gender, sexual, stylistic and–including intradiversity, where there is yet and still diversity within each group: women writing post modern epics, Asian writers writing genre detective fiction.

1) Diverse writers. Writers of all races and nationalities and income groups writing about anything and everything. This exists. Many people like to say things like “Black people don’t write,” “Women don’t write anything but romances;” however, these people are thinking backwards. They are assuming the demographics of published authors is the end all and be all. But of course, I’m not talking about published authors. This is about the much wider and more diverse pool of unpublished authors, a messy muck which most publishing professional can’t be bothered to address and hence goes ignored to the point where people make the above statements. Sure there is the slush pile. But most minority writers have been conditioned by a lack of progress to not submit. So writers need to submit. Not to get published, but just for the principle of the matter. Also, publishing professionals need to reach out. If they care they will make the time. If two people hold their hands out to one another, they will touch. This leads to number two…

2) Agents representing diverse writers. Agents are the first gatekeepers along with small press editors. When it comes to sorting the pool, agents and editors often cite lack of commercial appeal as the number one reason for not taking on diverse works. This is an issue. First, the idea that not being commercial is a reason for rejection is clever but false. It sounds intelligent, and those who believe “normal is right” or “normal should never be judged and hence should never be challenged” are quick to jump on this reasoning and end the discourse. But there’s more than one issue: How many risks do agents take on? Quite a few. Every year literary novels with no obvious commercial appeal are published. Also, every agent I’ve heard speak will say that they represent what they love. So by this reasoning, if an agent does not have a diverse roster, it’s because they don’t love diversely.

Agents are readers who have a say in what gets published. They’re tastes and preferences form the primary pool of novels that move through the professional gates. What get’s published is now only a sampling of this pool. If this pool lacks diversity, then there is no chance that mainstream literature will be diverse aesthetically or culturally.

If writers have done their job by emerging from all groups and writing widely the baton of blame gets passed to agents. If agents choose to only follow their whims then make intelligent excuses to justify those whims, no one else can be blamed. Editors will mainly take on what agents tout, and the rest of the publishing professionals will have widdled it down from there.

If agents are like the common reader, then it makes sense that minority niches would form. Concerning African-American fiction, most white people view the black reader as a miner, excavating the caves of their history to deliver whatever gold nuggets may be found. The LCD reader does not want to read a black romance. The LCD reader can not identify with minorities, because they never had to. Minorities are “The Other” and the reader only wants works that helps them understand The Other as other.

So if agents just go by their personal reading tastes, then the typical agent is only going to want the oppression narratives, the S&M (slaves and maids) stories, the raped and pillaged African survivor stories. These stories are important, but unfortunately they’ve been rendered cliche by becoming fodder for liberals to look open and intellectual and hence reduced to niches. Black people as a community have become quite divided over these narratives. The question has become: Is black fiction exploitative?

I believe African-American literature (especially in the categories I mentioned above, is exploited, not exploitative. These stories are important and need to be told. It’s the society, the context, the culture, around these stories that has led to the exploitation. Black writers like myself who do not write in our appropriate niche feel burdened by the legacies of novels like Beloved. Young black writers have to ask themselves: Do I have to write these kinds of stories just to get published? The fault is not with Toni Morrison, the fault is with society. If doors have closed to publishing, it’s because the publishing professionals have closed those doors and they use the readers as a shield to defend themselves: “Readers just don’t read that kind of stuff.” And yet every year, uncertain if a book will be read, publishers publish books, agents represent new writers.

Simply put, agents say they care, because they know they are supposed to. And I believe many do genuinely care. However, I believe actions speak louder than words. And the truth in the actions suggest one thing: agents don’t care enough to do anything about the issue of diversity. Things are the way they are, after all. What are they supposed to do? It’s not their fault; they want to do something but the world just is the way it is.

Well here’s what agents can do, and it’s so professional and pragmatic it just may be cold and ruthless. If you are an agent, you are involved in the politics of literature. Agents need to own this. Recognize that you are not a reader, and if you want to be a reader then quit. You are a professional in a first world country. You are educated so you value more than just making money, but you want to make money. Art has beliefs and ideals that are not commercial. An educated individual has beliefs and ideals that are not commercial.

If you value diversity in race, gender, sexuality, income class, and aesthetic, and you believe that diversity is overall important to literature, than you don’t really get to ignore all this when choosing novels to represent. If you are so well read, then surely you already have a sophisticated palette for literature. So finding diverse authors who have written diverse narratives surely should be a wonderful adventure to embark on. Sure you may not have the editorial contacts for an easy sell, but you are driven by conviction and diverse tastes. The writers are out there and you are determined because you have conviction.

So you look over your list and you have to admit it does not reflect your tastes and values. Minority fiction is poorly represented in your list and the minority writers you do represent don’t have much diversity even amongst themselves. So what would be the common sense thing to do? Easy. Cut someone. And preferably someone who isn’t selling of course. Clean house, make room for new blood. Even if it’s just one person. Harsh, right? But agents make these decisions every day. It’s their job to decide who deserves the attention.

Unfortunately, nothing I’ve said is true concerning the character or conviction of agents. They, especially when viewing contemporary novels, are quite obvious and predictable in their tastes. Their redemption of artistic taste comes from liking classics and name dropping them more than from recognizing them in a slush pile. They are notorious at overlooking great books and don’t care enough to change. But it’s not a tragedy; it’s ordinary…realistic.

Ultimately, agents and small press editors have to be creative, intelligent problem solvers who understand they are involved in the politics of literature. They have to balance making money and cultural ideals. They have to care; they have to take the intelligent risk. They have to take responsibility for their part in forming literary culture. After all, “diversification” is part of any good investment strategy. Diversifying literature, diversifies the market–so you aren’t hinging on only one demographic, hinging your success for the year on vampires and zombies. Bubbles burst.

3) Editors. What can be said? As an editor you wait for agents to present you with a great novel. How can you do your part in creating a rich and diverse literary landscape when agents just give you the same book over and over. So until agents present you with something genuinely different, not just something typical with a few signifiers to thinly disguise it as different, you are reprieved. However, when that novel comes, you have to champion it. Will you?

4) Every other professional. Editors take the books they want to champion and send them through the rest of the house. The big decisions get made: Is this book worth the risk? And how much money will we put behind it? It’s easy to view this in monetary terms: people won’t buy it so we won’t publish it. But again, publishers take chances on works that defy mainstream LCDs every year. They believe in them, because they connect to them as readers. Usually publishing has two extremes: the commercial fodder, the artistic epitomes, and everything in between. Can the industry support a  love between a Latina woman and a Japanese man. He’s the janitor; she’s the new CEO and she’s really afraid how it would look to be with a man who sweep the floor. In the end, love transcends class. Maybe it would be better if they both faced prejudice and at some point a gang of hatemongers threatened them. And for even better measure, have it take place in the 1940s against the back drop of prejudice and World War II.

The second story is much better than the first. Agents and editors could very easily argue rejecting the first on just being a poor story. And they would, only to publish the first story over and over (and over and over) again when told with white characters. It would be championed as a reverse take on the Cinderella story. “But obviously the white version would sell,” people would say. It’s amazing how everyday people generally speak out against the corporation’s oppression of people  only to defend every particular decision they make. And again, agents and publishers take risks all the time. Most just don’t care enough about diversity to take risks on diversity. Rephrase: the kinds of diverse narratives they want to take risks on fit into an obvious one-sided category…oppression narratives.

So the professionals do their part. They become great readers. They develop the strength and character to intelligently and realistically find ways to take chances on new authors, new voices, different kinds of narrative. They cut the writers of generic, poor selling works to open up the occasional slot to promote new writers: a Mexican writer who tells the story of a young Mexican boy who travels through dimensions on an epic quest, a gay writer who pens the gay Gone with the Wind, the black writer who’s inspired by James Joyce, and the female writer who’s inspired by David Foster Wallace. On to the big question:

4) Will readers read it? Will they love it? Most readers never get the chance to prove their openness to nonwhite voices and traditional narratives with culturally diverse casts. Can romance readers love a romance story between two black people in suburbia?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be “no” based on my experience. I hope my experience is too limited and not a reflection of general society. However, I find heterosexual white readers can appreciate diversity but not advocate it. By this I mean that they can “like” a novel with diversity, but it just never seems to grip them enough where they “love” it and will share it with everyone they know. This is a general comment, because I’m talking about the overall character of the culture. There are always examples, always people of all races crying for more diversity, but there voice is not loud enough. They are not gathered in enough numbers to seem like a demographic that can be marketed to. However, how can we ever become a market when publishers never create anything to market to us or if they do they don’t put enough money behind it so we know it exists.

Simply put, I think the public has not been tested enough to be blamed for a lack of diversity. It’s still too possible that the few heterosexual, white readers I’ve encountered who just couldn’t get enthusiastic even over their favorite LCD fiction told from another cultural viewpoint still have legitimate reasons not for liking one or two works. Only if book after book published and promoted by publisher goes ignored by society at large can a red flag go up. If the big six even made room for one book a month amongst themselves to advocate for, that would be twelve books in a year they can say they tried to promote. Most books are going to fail anyway; so why not at least go down in fire.

Originally Posted on August 2, 2013

Original Music: Cain and Abel

I still don’t know how this happened

How I turned best friends against each other

After years of hurt my heart’s been blackened

And now I live to see men torn asunder

I used to be a sweet angel

But Adam’s sons played games with my heart

To true love I tried to be faithful

Now I’m lost to a fury in the dark

How do I make these men Cain and Abel

Rumblin’ in the streets over my kiss

Black eyes, cracked heads, dreams like that shattered glass

All because dreams were never meant to last

How do I make these men Cain and Abel

Pride’s wrathful envy, burning all our prayers

So why don’t I care…care…

When the claws come out, they line up for slaughter

Why must men abandon their angels?

Now I’ve proved myself as Eve’s daughter

What is it in our natures?

I used to be a sweet angel

But Adam’s sons played games with my heart

To true love I tried to be faithful

Now I’m lost to a fury in the dark

[Chorus]

Love and betrayal clasp hands over my heart

Poisoned fruit and wicked charms

Are now my coat of arms

After being used and abused

I now have boys under my thumb

Why do I feel so numb?

[Chorus]

©2013 Reign of M (BMI)